


Busman’s Holiday

by gardnerhill



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Without a Clue (1988)
Genre: Acting, Actors, Community: watsons_woes, Gen, Prompt Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-31
Updated: 2014-07-31
Packaged: 2018-02-11 04:22:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2053443
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gardnerhill/pseuds/gardnerhill
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes an actor just has to act.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Busman’s Holiday

**Author's Note:**

> For the 2014 July Watson’s Woes Prompt #30, brought to you by [**monkeybard**](http://monkeybard.livejournal.com/): **A trip to the theatre.** Whether it's an actual stage, a performance, an operating theatre, or some other interpretation, make sure a theatre features in today's entry.

Watson had explored the box seats of the emptied and cordoned Adelphi until he found the slightly-chewed ticket stub that would lead him straight to the man wanted for murdering three East End pub girls. Straightening with the damning evidence safely wrapped in his handkerchief, he looked down at his partner prepared to be amused; when there was no one else around, Reginald Kincaid let his Sherlock Holmes persona drop completely, and his jocular comments whilst Watson did the sleuthing work undisguised, slouching against a pillar or chair, could be diverting at times.

Kincaid wasn’t looking up at Watson, however. All his attention was on the empty apron of the Adelphi stage, his back to the Crime Doctor.

A pang hit Watson; the man was his friend now as well as his business partner, and right now the actor’s stance was that of a blue-ribbon man staring at a bottle of single-malt in a shop window. Then he smiled. They were alone in here.

His voice carried perfectly down to the orchestra seats. “Go on. I know you’re dying to get up there.”

Kincaid twitched, and whipped around. “Blimey, you’re done already? No, it’s all right, just old memories.”

“You’re an artist. It’s good to try something different once in a while. Too much Sherlock Holmes makes Reginald Kincaid a dull boy.”

Kincaid sputtered a little. “You – you mean it?”

“Anything that strikes your fancy. I told Lestrade to give us an hour before they stomp in and track mud all over the place, and we’ve forty minutes left.” John Watson grinned, and called out like a groundling. “More, Mr. Kincaid! _Encore_! _Encore_!”

Kincaid blushed. But there was a light in his eye as well. “All right, then.”

The alacrity with which his partner sprang onto the stage let Watson know he’d made the right call even before the man slouched to mimic a pot-belly and waved an imaginary tankard of wine.

“A plague of all cowards, I say, and a vengeance too!”

Falstaff. Rogue, drunkard, and whoremonger – surely the patron of actors everywhere, and as unlike Sherlock Holmes as Kincaid himself was.

Watson watched as Holmes, as Kincaid, disappeared, and only a fat old knight remained, a mockery of the concept of knighthood save that his one redeeming feature was his love for the disgraced Prince. He laughed at the man’s bluster and bravado, sighed when he was brutally disowned by the newly-crowned King.

Kincaid straightened, rubbed his eyes with his hand, stared in horror at the hand, and began to wring both, stumbling across the stage, his gait changed to a lighter, shorter step…My god, he was Lady MacBeth. The doctor shuddered while the tormented murderess moaned about the blood she had spilled. In mid-step and mid-speech, Kincaid whirled around, swinging exaggerated womanly hips and an implied enormous bust, and screeched in a falsetto at a worthless husband who wouldn’t do what he was told by his wife, not even kill a few people and be a king…No, he was Lady MacBeth again, but this time for the music-hall, a pantomime Lady MacBeth. Now the sleepwalking scene featured the woman stumbling over everything and bumping into pillars even as the exact same speech came out (“Out! Out, damned – OOF! Ooh, yer pardon I’m sure – damned spot!”) – but now Watson howled with laughter over the words.

Now Kincaid assumed the stance of another knight, and with a flutter of his hand about his invisible ruffle he began to rattle off jokes about owning an enormous nose – ah, _Cyrano_ , one of the good newer ones.

Kincaid did a passable American drawl as a boorish heir deriding a “sockdologizing old man-trap,” thumbs in his braces; became a young Theban prince pleading with his royal father to spare his lover from her execution; an ideal henchman, suavely plotting with Lady Sneerwell to ruin a virtuous girl’s reputation; an old miser snarling that Christmas was a humbug; that same miser giddily dancing with joy at his redemption.

THUMP THUMP THUMP.

Both men started at the sound; Kincaid himself hit the stage with both feet, mid-caper. Lestrade and the Yard wanted in. The hour had flown.

The spell vanished like a puff of cigarette-smoke. Watson looked back at his friend.

Kincaid smiled a little, a bit sadly. But he stood in a roguish pose, with a sly smile, and intoned the perfect words to complete this foray into his old life, directed not to Watson descending from his box but to the whole empty theatre.

_“If we shadows have offended,_  
 _ Think but this, and  _ _ all is mended … _  
_ … _ _ So good night unto you all. _  
_ Give me your hands if we be friends, _  
_ And Robin shall restore amends. _ _ ” _

Robin Goodfellow leaped off the stage. Reginald Kincaid grinned in gratitude at the sleuth, who handed him his hat with a similar grin. And Sherlock Holmes and his faithful Watson let Lestrade into the theatre. 


End file.
